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Pension row hurts Japan's PM before summit
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-04 09:18

Voter support for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi fell in media surveys published on Monday despite high public expectations for his summit this week with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Japanese ruling and opposition parliamentarians scuffle around the chairman's seat at an Upper House panel where a controversial pension proposal, designed to cut pension benefits while increasing pension premiums, was passed June 3, 2004 in Tokyo. [Reuters]

The decline stemmed mainly from Koizumi's admission that he had skipped payments of some premiums into the state pension scheme, at a time when his government is urging ordinary citizens to keep up to date with their contributions.

The polls were conducted after Friday's announcement that Koizumi would travel to Pyongyang on May 22 for talks with Kim and his embarrassing confession the same day that he had missed almost seven years of payments.

Support for Koizumi's cabinet fell five points to 45 percent from last month in a nationwide survey by the liberal Asahi Shimbun newspaper conducted over the weekend. A poll by the daily Mainichi Shimbun produced similar results.

An uproar over politicians' failure to pay into the creaking state pension scheme -- reform of which is a hot political topic -- forced Koizumi's right-hand man, Yasuo Fukuda, to resign as top government spokesman this month.

Some 73 percent of respondents to the Mainichi poll supported Koizumi's planned trip to the North Korean capital, a bold political and diplomatic initiative that could pave the way for a breakthrough in ties with the country.

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